“We made a commitment to raise the next generation of leaders that will continue to break down systemic racism, particularly through narrative change work and racial healing.”

It’s not going to happen overnight, but Kaiwipunikauikawēkiu Punihei Lipe is down for the journey. As the Native Hawaiian affairs program officer for the University of Hawai‘i, an executive position within the UH Mānoa chancellor’s office, Lipe’s days (and nights and sometimes weekends) are spent advancing the university’s goal of becoming a “Native Hawaiian place of learning.” While that sounds pretty straightforward, the job comes with many layers, turns and sometimes twists, which means that she’s a master manager, negotiator, problem solver and, in her own words, hand-holder. A former academic adviser, she modeled her work style after her own favorite college advisers. They guided her enthusiastically, but gently, she says, with lots of hand-holding. She’s using that method now to gently guide UH toward its goal.

Soon after she was hired to head UH’s Native Hawaiian affairs program in 2017, the university, under Lipe’s guidance, became one of the first in the U.S. to receive official designation as a “Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation” campus center.

“What that means is that we made a commitment to raise the next generation of leaders that will continue to break down systemic racism, particularly through narrative change work and racial healing,” she says. “We already do a lot of that in small pockets, but the challenge now is, how do we achieve that as an entire campus?”

Lipe and her team have created a framework, a sort of curriculum, that will serve as a road map to realize the university’s goal of becoming a place where every individual, regardless of race, can recognize their kuleana to care for each other and for Hawai‘i in a way that embraces Hawaiian values.

“The way we define that is twofold: Be more responsive to Native Hawaiians, and be more reflective of Indigenous Hawai‘i,” says Lipe. This is where the hand-holding comes in.

“We move very intentionally—plenty of intentionality, plenty of thought before we take a step, and so the work is very slow. And a lot of the work is people work, and you can’t do that quickly.” —KH 

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“There was a point where it started to feel forced, but I continued surrounding myself with people who love Hawaiian music and it motivated me to keep going, and even deepened my love for it.” 

Growing up as the daughter of Pōmaika‘i Keawe and great-granddaughter of Auntie Genoa Keawe, both revered Hawaiian musicians, Mālie Lyman was thrust into the music scene right from the start. Like them, she’s multitalented—she dances hula, sings falsetto, plays the ‘ukulele and jams on the steel guitar. “My mom was the kind of mom who signed me up for everything, so I did it all.”

Though she’s been performing onstage with her family for years, after graduating from Kamehameha Schools in 2022 she pushed herself out of her comfort zone and enrolled in the Music & Entertainment Learning Experience program at Honolulu Community College. Her focus there is behind the scenes as a recording engineer and producer. So far, she’s loving it.

Lyman is proud of the path she’s chosen—one that continues her family’s legacy but stays true to who she is. “There was a point where it started to feel forced,” she says, “but I continued surrounding myself with people who love Hawaiian music and it motivated me to keep going, and even deepened my love for it.” Plus, living in her grandparents’ house in Papakōlea, where Auntie Genoa’s room has remained relatively unchanged, Lyman can wander across the hall when she needs inspiration to admire the things her great-grandmother left behind—letters from people like Mālia Kawaiho‘ouluoha‘ao Craver, journals she kept and songs that she was writing.

And 2023 is a big year for the budding recording artist. She went to Hawai‘i Island in March with Kimié Miner, sang at Merrie Monarch in April, with plans to jet off to Japan for a gig and perform in California in September. None of this will stop her from recording her first album. “I definitely want to branch out to do some hybrid genres, like mixing Hawaiian with R&B and jazz sounds, but my first album is going to be traditional Hawaiian music—it’s what I’m known for and what I do well,” she says. “I want to recognize my tūtū in my work, but make it my own. I’ll sing the same songs she sang, but it won’t sound like her; it will be unique to me.” We can’t wait to hear. —JC

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“I grew up around conversations that delved into what it means to be Hawaiian from a young age, and what it means to love the land.”

When Hāwane Rios was 9 years old she organized her first public protest. Her family, generations of Hawaiians born and raised in Waimea on Hawai‘i Island, had just received word that land along ‘Anaeho‘omalu Bay was being sold for development. That meant that her family stood to lose unfettered access to a beloved swath of land and ocean that, until then, had been available to everyone. Rios gathered her cousins and friends. With her leading the chants and pule, they asked the community, the developers, the politicians, her ancestors—anyone who would listen—to please spare the bay from being developed.

“I grew up around conversations that delved into what it means to be Hawaiian from a young age, and what it means to love the land, as well as the struggles of having to stand up and protect land. When ‘Anaeho‘omalu was sold, that was the first time I ever felt displacement in my life. It’s a place that represents my first meaning of sacred connection.”

It’s been a quarter of a century since then, and almost a decade since Rios was arrested for protesting the groundbreaking of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Maunakea. The fight to keep Maunakea free of research telescopes and other development has become one of the most notable community protests in modern Hawai‘i for its scale and outcome: TMT announced in 2016 that it would seek alternate sites. But that was just one battle.

Protecting and caring for sacred places is a calling, Rios says, a lifelong mandate that compels her to keep chanting, dancing, teaching, seeking justice. And now, to keep making music. She’s been a hula dancer and chanter for most of her life (she says her mom would move her tiny newborn hula hands to “Pūpū Hinuhinu”) and now she’s a recording artist too. Rios’ first album, Kū Kia‘i Mauna: Together We Rise, released in 2019, won a Nā Hōkū Hanohano award for contemporary album of the year. It’s both a love story to the mauna and a soundtrack to the life of a full-time kia‘i, a protector of Hawaiian values.

“I’m not naive to the realities of the world and the reality of what it means to be Indigenous in a society that wishes to erase us. But I don’t think that anything will stop us from doing everything that we can in the best way that we know how,” she says. “Everybody that stepped onto that mauna made a commitment. And while I can’t foresee how many people will show up the next time the call goes out, I know for sure that I’ll be there, and I’ll see you on the mauna.” —KH

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It started with a seaweed wig. Or rather, with a talk story sesh reminiscing about the days when there was enough limu washing up on the Waimānalo coastline to grab fistfuls of the curly red bunches to use as wigs while bobbing in the sandy shallows. It’s been a long time since those days. Though there is no known data to quantify the decline of limu on O‘ahu shorelines, any beachgoer knows that it just isn’t what it used to be: abundant enough to wrap around your ankles and catch between your fingers in the shore breaks, and easily harvested for homemade meals of poke and poi with a side of limu and chile pepper water.

The scarcity of limu in the wild got the kūpuna of Waimānalo talking about how to get it back. Ikaika Rogerson listened. Born and raised in Waimānalo, Rogerson founded Waimānalo Limu Hui in 2017. The grassroots group of community residents meets monthly to plant limu under the guidance of kūpuna and other limu experts. The hui found its groove, cultivating, growing, planting. Limu was making a comeback. Things were good. It was time to go bigger.

Waimānalo Bay is also home to the only ancient turtle pond on the island, an offshore area with a retaining wall created for the ali‘i of Waimānalo. The pond, known as Pāhonu, is in need of restoration and is now a secondary project for the hui. Awarded a three-year permit to restore the wall, the group began rebuilding it, and though the COVID pandemic extended the hui’s timeline, Rogerson and his crew of volunteers and masons will keep building until they get it right. It’s a trial-and-error process, he says. But “Pāhonu is a lifelong project. We’ve been rebuilding the greater part of the pond for the past four years, and every winter Kanaloa comes in and reminds us what we didn’t do right, and he takes it down for us. So we keep rebuilding—but we’re learning at the same time.” —KH 

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As president of the ILWU Local 142, Chris West sees his role as fighting for what’s fair for union members and slowing the exodus of Hawai‘i residents to other states. “Unions are the ones fighting to keep local families here by providing local jobs so that they can afford to live in a way that makes sense,” he says. 

West strives to lead with compassion, using Hawaiian values of lōkahi (working together) while being ‘olu‘olu (agreeable). This helps make the college-educated West relatable to the broad range of Local 142’s members, a stevedore who worked with him for 20 years tells me when I meet the union leader at Pier 51. Local 142 represents 16,000 workers in tourism, hospitals, supermarkets and agriculture as well as on the state’s docks. “I’m 100% transparent with my feelings, with my intentions, with my actions,” West says. “I’d rather give someone the benefit of the doubt and be wrong than think the worst of somebody.” 

When we talk, West is upbeat about negotiating a statewide contract for workers at Foodland supermarkets. He says pandemic shutdowns showed how essential these workers are. “They stuck it out when Hawai‘i needed them,” he says.  

Inspired by his parents’ example of helping others—his dad volunteered with Hawaiian civic clubs and served two decades on a neighborhood board, and his mom is a kumu hula—West started taking on union roles about three years after he became a full-time crane operator in 2001. Now he also coaches wrestling at ‘Iolani School, which his two daughters attend, and teaches martial arts. The different roles, he says, help him be a better leader. And he’s inspired by the ahupua‘a system as a good model of how a community can flourish when people play interconnected roles. 

“Unions can get painted in a bad picture as driving up the cost of goods,” he says. “But when you look at it in its totality, it’s just workers uniting together to fight for what they believe is fair.” —RD 

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“We need to be diverse, equitable in the way we hire, and inclusive in the way we operate.”

In his office at the Kaimana Beach Hotel, General Manager Ha‘aheo Zablan displays a photograph of his paternal great-grandmother, Elizabeth. “I’ve always had that image of her in front of her lei stand on Kalākaua Avenue, and it’s what brought me to Waikīkī,” Zablan says. “She’s watching over me, making sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to.” 

His tūtū’s legacy inspires the Roosevelt graduate at the helm of the iconic and gorgeously renovated Gold Coast property. The position is the latest step up for Zablan, who credits years of experience at Aulani, a Disney Resort and Spa, for teaching him all facets of the industry. As one of Hawai‘i’s few Native Hawaiian GMs, he is committed to Hawaiian values he considers fundamental. At the forefront is kuleana, or responsibility. Also high on the list is ho‘okipa—hospitality. “It’s in our DNA,” Zablan says. “It’s part of who we are.” At the same time, he proposes a regenerative model of tourism, encouraging those in the industry to provide “more grounded, Hawai‘i-centric” information when talking to visitors. 

Zablan has taken this approach to heart by underscoring Waikīkī’s history as a home for numerous ali‘i and its spiritual significance. Case in point, the property’s new in-house program with kānaka-owned Kapua Wa‘a Experience: “A four-man canoe will take guests out in the waters in front of the hotel and immerse them in the rich history of the area, sharing the original Hawaiian names for the surf breaks,” says Zablan.  

Equally linked to Hawaiian cultural values is Zablan’s dedication to the LGBTQIA+ community—he highlights in particular the role of māhū as revered individuals, healers and caregivers. (Zablan serves in his free time as board vice president of the Hawai‘i Health & Harm Reduction Center and vice chair of the Hawai‘i LGBT Legacy Foundation.) The GM sees his hotel as a place where everyone from guests to employees can feel at home. “We need to be diverse, equitable in the way we hire, and inclusive in the way we operate,” he says. —KA

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